I attended my first Ballard Seafood Fest on Sunday. Being able to stroll over was the way to go since I had to make trips back to my apartment with all of my bounty.

Although Seafood Fest does have elements that tie it to Seafood and Vikings, it’s essentially just a street fair – live music, street food, stuff for sale, and people on the road instead of cars. I also purchased a 7 pound salmon for $14.

The reason such seemingly trivial mental tasks leave us depleted is that they exploit one of the crucial weak spots of the brain. A city is so overstuffed with stimuli that we need to constantly redirect our attention so that we aren’t distracted by irrelevant things, like a flashing neon sign or the cellphone conversation of a nearby passenger on the bus. This sort of controlled perception — we are telling the mind what to pay attention to — takes energy and effort. The mind is like a powerful supercomputer, but the act of paying attention consumes much of its processing power.

I have felt my brain getting overwhelmed like this a few times in the last few years. I knew that a lot was happening but everything seemed to wash over me a bit slower than it should.

When I first started my Peace Corps service, after living in my 35,000 person town for a few months, I took a trip to the capital, a city of a million people for official business. On the cab ride from the airport, as the city slowly became bigger and more complex, I felt my brain picking up weird bits of pieces of my surroundings – a person waiting for a bus or a car turning. However, I couldn’t process the whole picture until the end of my ride. I never felt that again when I came into the big city.

Every time I went to a grocery store during my Peace Corps vacations to China and US. I couldn’t simply take it all in. I would focus on pieces that would jump out at me. OMG SYRUP!

Times Square – September. Lights. Noise. People. What?

Las Vegas Airport – September. Lights. Noise. People. What?

Now, the article says that the sensation happens to your brain whenever you are in a city. However, after the quiet vastness of Mongolia, my brain couldn’t handle these intense city situations until some extra resources were called to handle the extra strain.

January 2008 – As I sat in an airport going back to Mongolia after my America visit, I overheard political pundits discussing Clinton’s cry before the New Hampshire primaries. After arriving in Mongolia, I took a trip up north to visit a fellow Peace Corps volunteer. Sitting in a car in -40F, waiting for the driver, the Mongolian man sitting next to me listed the major Presidential candidates, “McCain, Obama, Clin-ton.”

Spring 2008 – During the Obama and Clinton showdown, I had to explain to more than a few friends that the Presidential Election wasn’t until November. Of course, there was some confusion. “What’s happening now?”

August 2008 – In a bar in St. Petersburg, I explained my support of Obama over Clinton to two students – one Dutch and one Polish.

Mongolians, Polish, and many others know more about our primaries than Americans know about foreign countries. Yes, our election is a big deal.

Edit: Oh yes, because I couldn’t vote against it, I donated a very small bit of cash to No on Prop 8. If conservative church groups are throwing a bunch of money at trying to pass this horrible measure, then people that believe in equal rights should try help the good guys.